Colts get loan to fix up stadiumBALTIMORE...

BALTIMORE -- The city's highest-ranking officials gave the new football team in town a vote of confidence yesterday -- and a $500,000 loan to help refurbish Memorial Stadium.

It was another step forward for Jim Speros, owner of the CFL Colts. Mr. Speros, who brought the Canadian Football League to Baltimore, has embarked on a $1 million renovation of the stadium and has sold more than 25,000 season tickets.

Yesterday, the Board of Estimates approved a loan from the Baltimore Development Corp., the quasi-public economic development agency. The deadline for repaying the loan, which carries a 9 percent interest rate, is Dec. 1, 1995.

Mr. Speros said he has invested about $600,000 in repainting the stadium in the team's blue and silver colors, refurbishing concession stands and locker rooms and resodding the field.

2nd jury deadlocks in child sex abuse case

BEL AIR

BEL AIR -- Circuit Judge Stephen M. Waldron dismissed a jury of nine men and three women yesterday after it had deliberated nearly 16 hours and failed to reach a verdict on a 36-year-old Edgewood man accused of sexual child abuse and rape involving the daughter and son of his girlfriend.

It was the second deadlocked jury for the defendant, Nicholas Victor Lee, who was tried on the same charges in December before Judge Maurice W. Baldwin.

M. Elizabeth Bowen, an assistant state's attorney and prosecutor for both trials, said yesterday that no decision has been made on whether Mr. Lee will be tried again.

The girl, now 14 years old, and her brother, now 12, said the alleged offenses occurred between February 1988 and July 1989.